


phantasmagoria

by kingslayer (amurgin)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Introspection, Mental Health Issues, Mentioned Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem), Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21815611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurgin/pseuds/kingslayer
Summary: Instead, his head is lulled back, moved by the melodies of celestial sirens, nightingales and mockingbirds. Patrons of love and innocence. Above, the architecture of the night unfolds into a canopy of stars headed by the arresting presence of the sickle moon, glowing in all its majesty. Swiftly, he becomes fixated upon the sharp curvature of its body as it looms over him, watching it draw nearer, growing larger, more menacing, and as his unblinking eyes blur out of focus, it begins to spin like clockwork. With one tick at a time, the witching hour approaches. Soon, his turn will arrive, when the moon will have swung out of orbit and, like a giant scythe, come to claim his head for the taking.Dimitri wanders. Then, he sleeps.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: FE3H Holiday Gift Exchange





	phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inallmybitterness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inallmybitterness/gifts).



He steals upon their doorstep just as the rain does, silent and heavy, weighing the threshold down with leaden footsteps, steel-toed when he walks. Right foot, left foot—an intermission—like he’s momentarily forgotten what’s supposed to come after. How could he ever remember, when the sweeping sands lay frozen at the bottom of the hourglass, no longer flowing, no longer pooling.

The dead cannot afford the luxury of time. 

In the end, what carries him forward is the bitter wind of an ancient memory picking up, thrashing like a wild beast that’s only growing wilder.  _ Time moves forward and so must you _ . It bellows in an archaic language that he does not comprehend, but feels compelled by nonetheless. And, as it raves madly, lashing viciously at his skin, it frightens the sullen tresses of his head, chasing them off in every which way. Still, he affords it no sympathy, only envy.  _ Everything _ . Dimitri would cast all of it away if it meant he would be forgotten by all those he cannot forget. 

By the time he arrives, night is there to see him off on his mad trip. 

Late as it is, everyone has withdrawn to their old dorm rooms, weary from another day spent wading through the incertitudes of war. Perhaps they have already fallen asleep, unable to resist the gentle soothings of slumber, the promise of a brighter day, of bloodless fields. The hour eludes him, but that must be precisely the case, seeing as only a few windows are still lit, and even those lights are waning, nearing the end of their brief lives. 

His eyes are drawn to one of the survivors, where he can spy the shadow of a hand, long fingers cradling the spine of a book, tracing out the edge of a page’s corner and turning. Through his eyes, the obscured stranger is transposed into a chimera by the thinly laid veneer of his madness, which flickers in and out like the burn of a fire singing the inside of his head. 

_ There it is! _ The sight of a long, thick braid, the flash of a blade’s edge, and now there are two, a man and a woman, joined inextricably as one.  _ Ah _ , the candle flares up with one last breath, old and furious, before laying itself to rest. Curtains fall shut.

His legs do not yet resume their journey. 

Instead, his head is lulled back, moved by the melodies of celestial sirens, nightingales and mockingbirds. Patrons of love and innocence. Above,  the architecture of the night unfolds into a canopy of stars, headed by the arresting presence of the sickle moon glowing in all its majesty. Swiftly, he becomes fixated upon the sharp curvature of its body as it looms over him, watching it draw nearer, growing larger, more menacing, and as his unblinking eyes blur out of focus, it begins to spin like clockwork. With one tick at a time, the witching hour approaches. Soon, his turn will arrive, when the moon will have swung out of orbit and, like a giant scythe, come to claim his head for the taking. 

That night has not yet come, however. Dimitri has fallen out of favour with Lady Luck.

But, if it is death that he wishes for, then he has come to the right place.

Having returned doesn't ease his mind the way he might have hoped. Once upon a time, so many years ago, the hope of a reunion seemed a most unlikely one, like an unattainable dream Dimitri could not help reaching for. The high walls of Garreg Mach do not bring back times of peace, days when the sun hung up high no matter the time of day he set his eyes upon the sky; days when that very sun was not just a star, impossible, but a celestial body nonetheless, with a smile so dazzling not even the verdant wind could dare lay eyes upon it. Indignant, it would simply ruffle up like a great big giant, blowing a whirlwind of minted locks in a desperate hope to drown its image. 

Those were happier times, blissful times, when they could simply take flight, seek refuge beneath the slouching crown of an apple tree in bloom. For an evening, they might have pretended that the world truly had expired, leaving just the two of them behind. How sweet a time that had been, waiting for the dawn to reach the Professor’s lips, praying to the Goddess to be blessed with a smile. He doesn’t need to close his eyes to see it unfolding before him: two bodies sprawled upon the grass, elbows and shoulders drawing nearer, almost touching but never quite. Their gaze washes over him in rays of sunlight, dangerously warm, and even as he feels the burn blanketing his sight, he cannot bear to look away. 

His eyes are open, and all it takes is a blink for that cherished memory to elude him. Peace has become the stuff of myths, and the vestigial body of the academy is just that. A corpse. An empty carcass picked apart by vultures, predators like Dimitri.

All it does is remind him of everything he's lost.

But memory is a fickle thing. Were he to be asked, he would admit to not remembering having walked all the way here. Not entirely, anyway. There was the cathedral, standing on its last bones, headless once the ceiling had fallen, but no less imposing, still striking in its terrifying aura. The pews sit abandoned, gathering dust despite Mercedes’ attempts at keeping the surroundings tidy, despite Marianne’s steadfast devotion drawing circles in the dust with her knees. 

Dimitri might notice them, every now and then, bodies vague as they navigate the aisles with soundless footsteps, shadowless figures fleeting about. They know better than to waste their words on him, but Mercedes will often offer him that smile of hers, understanding, all-knowing.  _ Tragic _ . And Marianne will give him her eyes. He’ll catch the light glistening off of them, and for an instant, the stormy skies of his mind will clear. There is a certain kind of comfort to be had in being mourned. He does not deserve her tears, but greed won’t ever be his worst sin.

A ways off, below, is the small graveyard, empty, barren now that the corpses have risen. Crawling over, all knees and elbows, they’ve been clinging to his heels ever since, like shadows that he can’t lop off once they’ve merged with him. Sometimes, his knees will shudder in a low guttural tremor that makes his joints quake, as though his very body is uselessly trying to shake itself free. But they won’t let go of him. Fingers uncurling, stretching out from below, joints snapping about his feet while wrists lock around his ankles. There is dirt beneath their nails, dried blood caked all over their skin, and teeth start snapping at him, chittering inside their skulls ravenously. 

This is judgement. 

He has outstayed his welcome and now they are calling him back, demanding that he pay off that debt for all the time he’s borrowed from them. Interest included,  _ of course _ .

Undoubtedly, Dimitri knows, somewhere deep beneath the dense fog that buries him whole, somewhere closer to his heart, or what’s left of it, those few shards of muscle, atrophying with each passing day. Somewhere, he knows he’s become a cemetery for the ghosts, a tomb for the phantoms haunting his head, for the voices flooding his lungs, leaving him breathless. They bury themselves inside him until he becomes lost in the river of souls traversing his body. And he can hear it drumming against his ears, blood rushing, always running. 

To where? It’s impossible to tell. 

_ This way, your Highness.  _

The helm belongs to Dedue tonight. His voice sits heaviest upon his mind, heavy like being buried alive, like flowers sprouting out of his flesh, blooming straight through his skin, until all he has left are blossoms for eyes. Like that, he forgets how to see. There are periods of blackness, sometimes brief, sometimes less so, a curtain of black falling upon his head like a guillotine. End scene. 

On those few lucky nights when he falls asleep, he will have sweet dreams of being headless, being blind or deaf or dead or numb, and, in that moment, it will be freedom that he is holding onto. But those nights are few and far between. The days draw longer and longer. 

A while has passed since he’s last slept. 

Most days, he spends eternities in the cathedral, Felix and Sylvain faithful in his shadow, watching over him like stone gargoyles. Unmoving. Neither of them knows what to say, not Felix, who’s always thought clearly, his head screwed on tight, perhaps  _ too  _ tight, and not Sylvain and his wicked tongue. Speaking had always come last when it came to uses for his mouth. And  _ still _ , they rarely left his side. 

Tonight, alone, is an exception. 

One memory Dimitri cannot cast away is that of the first time he had stepped foot back upon the altar, cloak draping behind him like a second skin, dragging wearily at his heels. He began searching for something in the rubble, and in vain did he break his nails on the stones for there was nothing amongst the shattered frescos of the saints, the ones with the unwavering eyes that watched him ever-so-closely. The Goddess had still been dead then, faith lost to the darkness with the body of one that was most beloved, one so unlike any of the others that had evaded him. 

It must have been then that everything went up in a blaze, consuming what meagre little life had been left within him. His heart splintered like stained glass, cracking so many times that the face of his love had become so distorted, so disfigured it could no longer be recognized. Curtains erupted into a flare of flames and began whipping about in a violent outburst, and the candles burned themselves into death inside the candelabra, wax dripping onto the marble floor, pooling into little effigies to be burned again, later. The wood turned to ash, pews collapsing one by one, and the heads of saints, defiled by the army as they were, had been cleaved off uncleanly. All that, and,  _ still, _ the Goddess had not returned. Had it been him, he would have descended from the heavens in a conflagration of fury, wrath at the tip of his lance as he plunged it into the chests of those human travesties, those degenerate scum of the Empire. He would have dyed their flags scarlet, raining their blood down upon the earth in a hurricane of guts and entrails. Prostrate on their knees, begging for mercy, and he would not have spared them. 

Looking back now, they are also clinging to his shadow. 

But hardly any of that matters anymore. What comes now is Dedue’s voice, from the top.

_ This way. _

Following it, he haunts through the mess hall, then the gardens and the pier, from where he watches the child-faced specters playing, falling into the water carelessly. Sometimes, Dimitri sees them there as well, sun catching in their hair, illuminating their features like a most beautiful work of poetry, sweet metaphor all over. Tonight, the deck is empty, and there is nothing left for him here, save for the call of the morning lark, beckoning him over. 

Daybreak is at hand. 

Only when he arrives at what Dimitri can only surmise is his destination does he notice that it’s been raining. His bones ache, soaked as they are, but their humdrum keeps him awake, alert, tearing his attention away from the inside of his own brain. A most welcome change of pace when it occupies his head, banishes all other thoughts from his mind. Baggage forgotten on the doorstep. 

He’s here,  _ finally  _ here. 

❂

It takes Byleth some time to realize that it isn’t the storm that’s knocking on the door. So fine and faint a sound, overwhelmed as it is by the shrill voice of the wind. Their eyes seek out the time, settling on the visage of the clock. _4 o’clock._ Not one soul should have been left awake, themselves included, but war council duty kept one up until the oddest of hours. Asking who might be suffering from the same ailment seemed useless. 

_“Dimitri.”_

The door opens with a creak, revealing him in all his glory, crown of thorns hung over his head, rain bleeding down his forehead. Something inside Byleth’s eyes sinks, hitting the bottom of the vast sea that is their irises, and, upon impact, regret begins to swell. The touch of their gaze is soft upon his face, so soft he cannot bear it, and so, he allows his head to roll to one side. There, obscured by the veil of washed-out gold, Byleth cannot peak into the most inner workings of his soul, his heart and what little else has been left behind. There is a ripple that shakes the water before him as Byleth reflects his movement, turning to look the other way with a meagre nod.

_“Come inside, won’t you? You’ll catch a cold out there.”_

How thoughtful, except that’s of little help to him now. Dimitri has always been cold. It could easily be the Faerghus blood he’s come to bleed so often. Or maybe it is a recent development, of only a few years old. There may have been a time when the world had been warm for him, too. Maybe, _maybe._ But if that had ever been the case, it would be a mystery to him.

They do not wait for him to cleave the head off of that thought. 

Byleth turns and Dimitri’s face rises to follow them, of its own accord, rebelling against his better wishes to avoid what he can only guess is contempt. If he’s not careful, if he’s not mindful, they’ll leave him behind again. _Again,_ he’ll be left alone to fend for himself, orphaned by love, by family and friends, where not even the wilderness will adopt him as its own. Boar-beast or not, he is no animal. He is worse. A man. 

The storm throws a window open, hinges shaking in a mild terror.

He is reined back into his body by the featherlight touch of a finger upon his wrist, persuading him as their hand wraps around his and draws him in effortlessly. His eyes fall naturally to the ground, where he watches the dead hands slack off around his legs, letting him go with a firm promise that they _will_ return, one that is written in the blood he drips over the threshold of Byleth’s door. 

When Dimitri’s feet come to a halt, they cannot help but follow, turning to pursue him. At the sight of the blood splattered across his armour, the blood trickling down from between his fingers, Byleth’s expression does not waver. Their eyes narrow slightly, eyebrows tugging close together, and while that might have meant entirely too much only a short while ago, now, it does not betray their thoughts. 

_“I_ _—”,_ he comes up short, breath catching inside his mouth. _“My apologies. I have come and made a mess of your floor.”_ Unsure of what else to say, Dimitri slumps inside his own body, dejected. His hand falls from Byleth’s hold, revealing his red-stained palm, and for a moment, he considers leaving. Out there, he is needed. The blood is calling out to him, voice quiet and soft, a lullaby to pry him from his body. But Byleth banishes the thought from his mind.

Gently, they raise on the tips of their toes, hands coming to cradle his face in between them. There, they hold his gaze hostage with their delicacy, a quality Dimitri cannot pry himself away from. The features of his own face mellow out, eyelids sinking upon his cheeks before slipping closed. And he relishes the feeling of finally being held again within the grip of reality. 

They pass a few breaths that way, with Byleth drawing their thumb upon his cheek, Dimitri plunging himself headfirst into their existence. There is no need to talk, but it helps to be heard, to know there is someone willing to listen if he was to speak. 

His time is up when Byleth descends, the soles of their feet landing down onto the ground. Their hands set him free, too, but then they’re working the clasps of his cape open, dropping it to the floor in a whirlpool of crushed blue velvet. Then comes the rest of his armour, pieces clattering to the floor one by one. A pauldron, a bracer, greaves, and his breastplate. They sit at his feet lifelessly, without getting back up despite how convinced Dimitri is that it is only a matter of time until his armour will march on without him inside. 

Byleth steals the life out of it, returning it to Dimitri’s bones with each touch, each ghosting of their hand across clothed muscle. Fingertips feel warm against his body, warm and light, and every spot they touch begins to rise above his breath. His body feels lighter, there, candlelit and in the hold of someone he cannot help but trust. Beneath their touch, he unravels like a ball of yarn, tension easing out of his muscles. 

There is an intimacy to the exchange that is hard to place, hard to make heads or tails out of, and maybe that’s just alright. Maybe he doesn’t need to understand in order to recognize it for what it is: a wish, a first love, a last love if he plays his cards right, if they’ll have him and every other soul that shares residence inside his body. 

Below him, Byleth tests his gaze with their own eyes, peeking out from underneath the flutter of thick eyelashes, long and curled and impossibly beautiful. And he loses track of himself counting every one of them before finding his reflection in Byleth’s wide-open eyes, the arch of their brows as they regard him with a surprise that rips Dimitri out of his sleepless delusion. His hand freezes against their cheek.

 _“Professor, I_ _—”_ his speech turns monosyllabic, and Dimitri struggles to get the rest out, wringing it from his tight tongue like a drop of water lost inside a dessert. _“I know this behaviour is hardly befitting a man of my…stature, but I do not wish to apologize. I want to—”_

 _“You don’t have to. There is nothing for you to apologize for anyway.”_ Their skin blooms scarlet beneath his thumb, in the bed of his palm where Byleth sinks their face with the release of a soft, brittle sigh. _“I won’t apologize either, for all the time I’ve spent waiting for you, hoping for you to return to me.”_

_“And I, for you.”_

His thumb paints them in broad strokes, manipulating the flush of their skin like fire in a pit, but nothing has quite the same effect as the soft collapse of his lips upon theirs. Byleth raises again, stretching to meet Dimitri somewhere in between from where he begins to spill over them, gold and velvet overflowing all around them. His hair frames the edges of their face in a curtain of dull sunlight, wolfing them down until _Dimitri_ and _Byleth_ are gone. What remains is _us_ , _them,_ and _everything in between._

When they come apart, he is soft-touched and already out of breath, but he refuses to put any more distance between them than what’s necessary, what’s just barely appropriate. 

_“Perhaps...Might I kiss you again?”_

And all Byleth can do in return is to close their eyes and shudder a small breath that gets lost against his jaw in a tickle of warmth and chamomile. Their hands settle on his shoulders, grip tightening when they pull themselves higher and higher in anticipation of what is still to come. 

Dimitri, for all his roughness, melts to the spot where he’s standing. His mouth runs loose in a smile that is entirely too large for his face, wide-lipped and teeth peering from under. He finds Byleth endearing and lovely in every aspect. The first breath of fresh air when he resurfaces. The first ray of sunshine pouring down his face after the leave of the longest night of the year. Most of all, the first love of a man changed by hatred. Byleth is everything, and everything is too much and not enough and also nothing, but Dimitri takes it one step, one breath, one kiss at a time because that is all he can do. 

His arms are nervous and curious around their waist, fleeting until his hands begin to tighten around them, and then he’s lifting them just that extra little increment needed. And they’re kissing again, getting lost in a world that teeters on and off of real. Dimitri knows there are other places stealing his mind away, one thought, one voice at a time, vestigial bones growing inside his body, but here, _here_ he feels safe. Byleth’s lips on his are a sweet reprieve pouring down his throat, setting his steps afloat with an air of lightness he remembers only as a childhood nostalgia. His step-mother lifting him up in his arms, his father throwing him over his shoulder, Felix and Sylvain and Ingrid chasing him around the gardens. 

The darkness recedes and there is Byleth, lips over his in a prayer that breaks like the waves over his head, pulls him out of his stupor. The seashore is rough and jagged and Dimitri has to pick up the pieces with one hand, but his other is full and warm and maybe that’s enough to keep him going. 

_“You should sleep.”_ Their voice is quiet, yet clear against the backdrop of the storm’s absence. 

_“Do I really look that awful?”_ Dimitri’s laughter is abject when he tries to make light out of the situation. His shoulder slouch down, but he nuzzles his face into Byleth’s cheek, sighing softly over and over again, a poorly tuned melody that’s out of breath. 

They understand, won’t laugh at his pitiful attempt at a joke. Instead, they draw him in delicate caresses with their lips, kissing along his jaw in a fluttering of butterfly touches. He can feel the shake of their head, and relief washes over him.

_“You must be tired.” After all the days you’ve spent haunting the halls, turning stones over looking for revenge. You are a ghost haunting your own body and perhaps you should lay yourself to sleep, let time heal your wounds, Dimitri._

Before he can object, he is being guided to the bed, one step at a time, _one step at a time_ , he is being laid upon the mattress and his eyelids are depriving him of his sight. Theirs is the face his eyes fall asleep on, but his ears have earned the favour of the Goddess. Accompanying the sound of their footsteps retreating in a pattering against the flooring is a melody, an ancient lullaby that sings his bones to sleep, lulls his muscles to rest. The pull of a chair rings harshly as it skids over the floorboards, but not even that can coax him awake. 

He sleeps unturned. 

❂

When he awakes, it is to the heat of the sun beating harshly upon his face. Outside, the birds flitter about, robins and sparrows frolicking together between the branches of trees. Life blooms all around. 

Dimitri wrestles his eye open, but the rest of his face is obscured, and he nestles deeper into his coverings, letting his head get swallowed by the tender touch of blue against his lips and cheeks. It doesn’t keep the light out, though he cannot make himself mind its intrusion. He feels safe there, coddled in the heat of a new spring, the mild earthy flavour of bluebellvine surrounding him. The pillow swallows him, opening up a garden around his head, blades of grass stroking his temples, wind stroking his face. He is at peace. 

Eventually, Dimitri _does_ rise, sore and still heavy with sleep, but he does move with a purpose he barely recalls. The bed groans its protest as he stands up, mattress springing back up as blue slips off his back to the ground. It is only as he steps out of it that Dimitri notices his cape, limp where it has fallen. He bends down to pick it up, slinging it over his arm before walking to the desk at the far corner of the room.

 _“It is your turn to sleep, beloved.”_ The whisper of his voice is transient, but the draping of his cloak over Byleth’s shoulders will live eternally in his memories, even if, at times, he might forget. Right now, he is here, and nothing else will matter the way this small little fact of life will. 

His hand lingers upon their head, where he gets lost playing in the waves, but he is looking forward, into the distance, where the sea stretches open before him. 

It is time to go. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [inallmybitterness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inallmybitterness) 💕💕 I hope you enjoy this little gift of Dimileth and that your holidays will be filled with lots of joy! ;^;


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